Review: "The Climate Fables: The Clouds" Looks Up to a Child

The Climate Fables: The Clouds

Written and directed by Padraig Bond

Presented by FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks

94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC

August 21-23, 2025

Since the most recent staging, in January, of one of the plays of Padraig Bond's cycle The Climate Fables, the United States government has moved from not doing nearly enough to address humanity's effect on the climate to actively fighting anything that might mitigate climate disaster. Closing out a literally fiery summer, The Climate Fables returned to UNDER St. Marks with a (very) staged reading of a new installment of the cycle from FRIGID resident playwright Bond: The Clouds. The Clouds closes the multi-play, millennium-spanning arc of the witchy Miranda and the burden that she bears of struggling to reconcile humanity and a world ecology devastated by anthropocentric climate change and ever less able to support life. Alongside Miranda, a cast of new characters, including one from a skybound society that may offer the last hope for humans, help to compellingly highlight issues of power and protest that are neither separable from the ecological issues of the Capitalocene nor as removed from our current moment as one might hope.

The Clouds begins with a prophet (Zach Wagner) delivering an impassioned account of his vision of the end of humankind. His having received his message at the end of 40 days and 40 nights is one of the play's biblical echoes, but characteristic of The Clouds' blending of mythologies, the message came from a mighty cloud dragon. The dragon told the prophet of the existence of people who have taken to living in the clouds, and one of these, a nameless child (Annabella Pritchard), in order to satisfy their curiosity, takes the forbidden step of coming down to the surface (a place now without children) by clinging onto a mountaintop. The child encounters a pair of farmers (played with comedic contrast between acceptance and anxiety by Samson MacDermot and Claudia Zajic) who direct them to Ogallala, a city that we saw founded in a previous, eponymous installment of The Climate Fables and the last human settlement, where they tell her to find Miranda (Kristen Hoffman, bringing the same power to the role as in previous outings). Ogallala, it turns out, is now under the despotic rule of a philosopher king, expertly embodied by Luis Feliciano as funny and even ridiculous (this is a king whose regalia consists of a bathrobe, no shirt, and SpongeBob Crocs, which probably don't biodegrade) but no less threatening for it. The first in the city's line of philosopher-kings was Fred Oakland, whom Feliciano also played in Ogallala; this ghosting, in the sense that Marvin Carlson uses it, serves as a commentary on the potential for corruption and abuse in even the most well intentioned and carefully thought-out governance structures–as could not be playing out more obviously in the United States right now.

Although the current king's repression has been harsh, there remain activists who resist him. Miranda is affiliated with this group, who meet in a safehouse with a comical number of locks that the actors mime having to deal with each time someone enters or exits. This safehouse is where the child ends up, and while Miranda, like many, many others, has been imprisoned, they meet Wisconsin (Jack Pappas), Peter (Sydney Gerlach), Grasshopper (Jess Lauricello), and Acacia Sapling (Zoe Kay). Luckily, since Miranda is a witch, imprisonment does not inhibit her from visiting the child in a dream, telling them that they are fated to lead the people of Ogallala to the clouds and delivering the child a name: Enkidu, an ancient Mesopotamian representation of the "wild man" figure. Pritchard's performance makes Enkidu a convincingly inspiring figure, her innocence bolstering her moral integrity, selflessness, and determination. But will that inspiration be enough to realize their and the activists' plans and bring everyone in Ogallala to freedom and to the clouds? Nature, in the form of an oncoming dust storm, will have a part to play in the answer as well.

If the dystopian future in Ogallala has improved on our present in any way, it's that "they/them" seem to be the standard pronouns. Otherwise, the parallels to our current moment are not encouraging. We see force deployed against the protestors–one of whom, Peter, notably wears a keffiyeh—under the guise of loving the city and maintaining order and security; mass incarcerations; government persecution for speech; and state propaganda disseminated by a cowed media. And the revelation of how the government is getting the city through its famine works as a grim metaphor for the self-destructiveness of all of these ways of being. In a TV interview with an obsequious pundit named Chris Wallace (a hilariously spot-on Amanda Myst Leske), the Philosopher-King, who is infuriated at the question of whether it really is the end of days, insists that the city has plenty of time to make progress, a refrain that should sound uncomfortably familiar to us in the present day, and which is echoed in one of the farmers' hesitation and fear of change when it actually becomes possible. Enkidu wants everyone to be part of the change that they are trying to bring about, raising the question, do you bring the fascists along to your potential utopia? What about the traitors to the movement? Is forgiveness necessary for securing the future or does it imperil it? Even the better future in The Clouds means no more humans on the surface of the earth, and the way in which the play unfolds leaves plenty of room for symbolic readings of what such a transition signifies. The staged reading made excellent use of song at a few key points, including in one rousing, affecting scene with the activists; the same is true of offstage voices and dialogue, and a couple of scenes with the Philosopher-King entertainingly extended their comedy into the scene transitions. As we were writing this response to a play that includes a massive dust storm, headlines appeared about damage to Phoenix, Arizona by…a massive dust storm. We have written before that The Climate Fables can seem like history written before the fact, but The Clouds reminds us that we can, and should, still work to resist and to ensure that their future and ours becomes less alike.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

Read our reviews of previous shows in the series:
Review of The Climate Fables: Coyote Oughta Eat That Salesman!
Review of The Climate Fables: Debating Extinction
Review of The Climate Fables: The Collapse of the Hubbard Glacier
Review of The Climate Fables: Ogallala
Review of The Climate Fables: The (Green Apple) Play
Review of The Climate Fables: The Trash Garden

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